The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

Georgia on my mind

There was something rather perfect about my last flight of the 2012 Formula 1 season. It departed from Gate “F1″ at Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. I had gone there because airline logic meant that it is always more cost-effective to return home by the way you came and so, having set out to go to Austin, by way of Atlanta, that was deemed the best way home.

Ray Charles was right about Georgia because I had the place on my mind “the whole day through” because there was a 12-hour lay-over between my flight from Brazil and my departure to Paris.

The idea of spending 12 hours in the airport did not appeal at all and I decided that I would escape and discover Atlanta. It is 32 years since I was last outside the airport there and I did not recognise a single thing, which was probably a good thing because I did not have good memories of the place. My only previous visit was on a Greyhound bus and at the time Atlanta was a grim place. I did not enjoy my stay. That was a lifetime ago and in 1996 Atlanta had an Olympic Games, so I figured that it would probably be a little better than before.

It was a beautiful crisp autumn morning, cold but sunny, and the trees were were in a million shades of red, gold and green. I headed downtown just after breakfast with no clear idea of what I was going to do. I got off the train at one point just because the announcement made it sound nice. It wasn’t, so I got on the next train… Exploring is not something we get to do much in F1 and I miss that. Twenty years ago, before the world of responsibility, parenthood and serious relationships came along, I use to spend a lot more time discovering places and people. It was great fun and it was nice to have a day to do it again. I wandered around the downtown for a bit and concluded that I could either go to The World of Coca-Cola or the Martin Luther King district. I’d have gone to Margaret Mitchell’s house if it had been closer to the centre of town. In the end, I chose The World of Coca Cola, in part because the company has just announced an F1 sponsorship; in part because I remember coming home from school and finding my mother weeping the day Martin Luther King was killed and I wanted a lightweight happy kind of day.

I made the right choice. The World of Coca-Cola was as lightweight as bubbles. It is a permanent exhibition designed to show folk with nothing better to do what the Coca-Cola company has been doing since John Pemberton, supposedly a morphine addict after being wounded in a battle during the Civil War, began to make drinks that used coca to take away the pain of life. Initially it was mixed with wine (my kind of drink), but when those boring temperance folk came along Pemberton decided to create a non-alcoholic alternatives which, quite by accident, took the world by storm.

I thought that Coca-Cola was all about making drinks, but I soon realised that in the mind of Coca-Colans, the firm has in fact existed solely to make people happy. I soon spotted that they had caught a very nasty case of Disneyitis, which means that everyone smiles a ridiculous smile and says “awesome” far too many times. Having visited “The Happiness Factory”, where the welcome was so sugary that I got instant indigestion, we moved on to the Vault of the Secret Formula, which was a very dull-looking safe in which there is a bit of paper that we are not allowed to see. There was a small and slow bottling line which was supposed to function but had been turned off during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and so was not working at all. I found the “Taste it!” section interesting and tried some of the more obscure drinks that Coca-Cola produces around the globe. There was a shop (inevitably) where they sell pretty much everything with Coca-Cola written on it. They even gave me a bottle of the stuff. The most exciting moment was when I discovered that this odd place has a million visitors a year.

I paid $16 to get in.

It struck me at that moment of revelation that Formula 1 could easily make a better self-promotional “attraction”, in order to bang the drum about the sport and make more money and attract new fans. OK, that would involve some investment, but it would be a way to engage with the fans, just as NASCAR has done with its Hall of Fame in Charlotte. To me this is very simple customer service and if done right it can make a profit as well.

F1 did try to build a theme park in Dubai a few years ago, but that involved no risk at all for the Formula One group. It picked a company and demanded a price. The F1X theme park never happened and fell apart leaving lots of people unpaid, including me.

If Coca-Cola can create a place that pumps profits by selling bubbles, bottles and bull to the general public, I have little doubt that F1 could do better.

After that I wandered down a street called Peachtree, which seem to be the name of half the streets in the city, and then stopped for a disgraceful lunch involving fried green tomatoes, a rib-eyed of cowboyesque proportions and some serious key lime pie.

It was delightful, even if the waitresses said “awesome” too many times.

And so, cheery in mind and body, I returned to the awesome airport and headed for the totally awesome Gate F1… bound for some peace and quiet.

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I visited Atlanta after attending Petite Lemans in 2007 (and also a visit to Barbers in Alabama) and enjoyed the visit. World of Coke was on the list and at the time they played a cartoon video that some Finnish accented penguins talked about Formula One.
I also took time out to visit the zoo as they had pandas at a time before the UK and France were given a pair of their own.
All in all it was a lovely place to visit and hope to go back again.
And you are right about the little bit of promotion F1 could do for itself. Coke do it in many US cities and Mars does it with their M&M brand around the world as well to great success (to a point that the Vegas store had a Kyle Busch Nascar on display)

Joe, glad to hear you enjoyed your day in our city, at least somewhat. I’ve lived here for over 30 years. I too was in Austin for the race, and wondered how many of those in the F1 circus had to pass through our airport on the way to COTA. Hope you get a chance to rest and lay low for a few weeks while recharging the batteries, and I look forward to your posts, tweets, and blog entries in Jerez, if you go to winter testing, and then Melbourne and the rest of the 2013 season.

My father was a lawyer in North Carolina and, when he was just starting out, he did some legal work for old Mr. Haynes, who had founded the Haynes textile companies. Haynes told my dad one day about a young fellow who had once approached him to invest in a new-fangled non-alcoholic drink that, the fellow said, would beat sarsparilla out of the market. Haynes had him mix up a batch in the kitchen, tasted it and decided it had no future. Once Haynes turned him down, the young fellow moved south to Atlanta … to make history.

This is exactly what Sky Sports does here with its F1 channel. Race weekend coverage when its on, with reruns sporadically in the days after a race, but the rest of the time its rolling 24/7 with analysis and associated programming. It’s mad. I’m sure one of your big boys over there like Speed or whatever could do something similar?

Imagine how a well-financed and presented Formula 1 themed attraction or “Hall of Fame” would do (assuming it was located in an actual country that people visit). Place it in the UK, France, Italy, or Germany near a major city with a track, historic or modern (or near the teams’ base area in the UK), and watch the tourists roll in. The Porsche and Mercedes factory museums are huge tourist attractions.

As you have noted previously, F1 does an abysmal job of promoting itself. Bernie and company just cash the checks. There is no investment in anything beyond short-term gain.

Hi Joe. Just voted you as ‘Best F1 Blogger’ in the Silverstone survey – this post and all your others like it are part of the reason why. It’s always nice to hear a little of the stuff around the outside of your F1 life as well as the essential business and sporting material. Thanks for all your insights this season.

Surely F1 already has a place that could be turned into Grand Prix Land and it has the distinction of having held one of the classic Senna victories. I mean of course Donnington, the museum is outstanding and the track is scenic.

Ferrari have their museum in Maranello, VW have their Autostadt in Wolfsburg, BMW, Porsche and Mercedes Benz all have created museums with some incredible collections and tourists as well as aficionados of the brands flock to them paying good money. It’s been done many times, sometimes the buildings themselves become attractions of their own, so F1 should have plenty of reference examples to understand that a museum/experience/hall of fame is a good way to promote the brand and can be profitable in it of itself.

This should be a part of a centralized F1 marketing/promotional strategy that is completely lacking in the sport. I understand that CVC are interested in maximizing profits by investing the least possible, but someone must have pointed out to them all the potential left untapped from not developing the brand with a concerted marketing strategy like most if not all other worldwide organized sports do. Their golden goose would to lay so many more eggs if they just fed it properly.

As it’s been pointed out before by Joe and many other F1 journalists, FOM seems to have little interest in promoting and expanding the brand beyond transmitting the races on TV. Sad.

This was a great little story. I’m glad the adventure was pleasant, especially after reading Doodson’s article about his hesitation to give the US a chance like this anymore. I’ve wanted to hear something positive ever since.

The queue (line) was back to the 2 hour mark at the Coke museum when we were there so it got a miss. Still having seen the BBC docu series on “The men who made us fat” recently, one cant help being grateful for missing some of the corn syrup.

Sorry to go off topic, but it appears that Ferrari is likely to put in a protest against Vettel for passing Verne under yellows at the Brazilian GP. On board ootage (previously untransmitted) has been found showing Vettel passing while the yellow lights were illuminated. Normal penalty is 20 seconds added to finishing time. If applied this would be enough to make Alonso world champion.

Thank you for this awesome bit of blogging. You’ve made my day. I get given a lot of red wine at Christmas (of varying degrees of quality) and a couple of years ago discovered red wine & coke. It helps me when I’m writing / composing (well, I like to think it does) and in the case of the lower quality wines, makes them palatable. There are of course some real quality wines which I keep back and drink “normally”. All my family and friends think I’m a total Philistine now – but I read here that coca cola was originally taken with wine.

I can add to that, a use from my days (hundreds of years ago) as a Philips rep, I took one of my customers (who was half Italian) in Watford, out to lunch at an Italian restaurant. During the coffee he poured some of his red wine into it. I asked him why and he explained that it it perked up the coffee if it was not up to much. I have done it ever since unless I get proper espresso. This was back when coffee was just coffee and the height was filter coffee, before espresso machines made it to the uk, even before the cafetiere. Also long before some genius conned millions of overpaid gullible marks into pretentious coffee hysteria with the real thing adulterated in different ways and sold at the most extraordinary prices. Suppose I should have bough those shares in cafe nero a few years ago after all. :-(

If only the Americans could make proper tea instead of chucking it in the sea, maybe they would be, a bit different. less warlike. I was amused to see an American soap recently where they all drank tea, but of course it was earl grey with lemon, no look in for Johnny Vegas and the monkey (PG tips) there. I suppose earl grey is ok if you remember to take your silver spoon out of your mouth first, but not as satisfying as a proper brew.
Perhaps they just don’t have kettles in America, they are essential to make a half decent cup of tea. :-)

When my American uncle asked me on my first visit if I would like some tea, I had no idea he meant iced tea. It wasn’t a problem though, as it was the same temperature as the tea I drank as a teenager, when my mother would plonk a cup on my bedside table at around 8.00am and I would rise at midday to drink it…
I must try wine in coffee – coffee being another drink which I have too much of when composing!
Not bad for an F1 blog…

Nick, you really should have used that thing where your name links to you website. Just looked you up, and enjoying immensely just now, Lorna’s Waltz.

If you ever bothered to dive deep into the beginnings of this blog, you’d also find my tirades about the PRS. I think the whole point of here, is it may be about F1, but there’s a diversity of the opposite of dullness.

F1 museum…
You do what the Art World does… so encourage each track to have an exhibition space and have a rotating exhibit which is occasionally updated. People go each month to a ‘new exhibit’. Now it’s up to that particular museum, er I mean track to make the most of it.
The really smart thing would be… once it was up and running (and refined) you then have the exhibit rotate itself into regular museums and galleries. F1 @ the V&A has a lovely ring to it!

If you do the same trip next year (by the sounds of it you will) go to the Georgia Aquarium just down the street from Coca Cola-ville. It’s quite excellent. Thanks for a great season of posts and interesting banter on these pages. Wish you a very happy holiday season.

$64 for tickets, $10 for parking, waited nearly an hour and a half to get in. Watched two poorly conceived movies, however the other walk through attractions were entertaining. This museum should be free, I did not feel it was worth the money. Maybe they should take a cue from Budweiser and make their tour free to thank their loyal customers.

Great article as always. It also touches a subject that you’ve been writing a lot about, it is the merchandising of F1 (or lack thereof). I have a 4 1/2 year-old boy who is passionate about F1. As I was looking for Christmas presents, I came to realize that there are no F1 toys for young fans who are only interested in playing with car and not collecting them.

Since most of his cars are bound to suffer “engine failures” or “accidents” at some point, I am not ready to pay over 50€ for perfect replica of last year’s car but would be interested in diecast model.

It is crazy to think of the billions of dollars that Disney is making out of its “Cars” franchise and that F1 has not managed to sell more of its products especially to young kids when all the boys I know are so interested in playing with cars…

32 years ago. Sounds like you arrived smack in the middle of the Atlanta Child Murders spree too (29). Lovely. BTW, Road Atlanta, after Road America, I’d say is the track that the most U.S. fans would love to see F1 cars race on.

Good post! Totally with you on America and the permanent happiness. Everyone wishes you a ‘great’ day there. How many great days do you think you have in your whole life? They seem to have one every day.

Joe, a great pity I hadn’t known you were on your way through Atlanta, I would have been delighted to spend a few hours with you playing the tourist.
So many great neighborhoods, friendly people (that isn’t put on, by the way, that’s just the way of the South), good restaurants serving authentic ‘disgraceful’ food. It really is an interesting city, certainly since the Olympics.
I get a lot of enjoyment of your version of DSJ’s ‘Continental Notes’. More next season please.
Best regards.

“F1 did try to build a theme park in Dubai a few years ago, but that involved no risk at all for the Formula One group. It picked a company and demanded a price. The F1X theme park never happened and fell apart leaving lots of people unpaid, including me.”

This is what happens when people think “how can we make money” first and think about their customers second.

The correct way around is customers first and money second. If you put the interests of your customers first and work to satisfy those interests with a quality product at a value for money price, then the profit will take care of itself.

Red Bull Media House is a great example (customers are TV/internet/film viewers). Started off as a loss making venture which paid to put it’s extreme sports features on channels. Now the channels pay RBMH to play their features. It now breaks even. So where is the profit? The Red Bull logo associated with some of the highest quality action video you’ll ever see (typically 30 mins or 90 mins a program). That is worth a fortune to Red Bull. Free advertising, zero cost production. A bargain in anyone’s money.

This is known as “Branded Entertainment”. Most people doing it don’t do it at zero cost like Red Bull. Translation: Most people pay for Branded Entertainment.

So back to F1. Until F1 starts thinking about serving the punters rather than the bankers F1 will never reap the revenue it really could reap. Everyone talks about the great deals BE makes, and he does. But he is so focussed on the promoters he misses the opportunity to serve the fans and make a huge profit.